NLSIU Bangalore Prof V Vijayakumar will be appointed as NLIU Bhopal’s director on Thursday, the Madhya Pradesh high court announced yesterday, finally putting an end to the long-winding saga of administrative uncertainty at the law school.

A graduate of Madras University, Vijayakumar was VC at the Ambedkar Law University Chennai from 2010 to 2013. He has also served as registrar at NLSIU from 2005 to 2008. He has been a professor of law since 1997 and has taught at Presidency College Madras before he joined NLSIU.

He commented: “[At NLIU] there are two things which we need to look at. One is the inquiry which is going on, regarding the marks and [fake] certificates issued. It is a high court inquiry so I will not interfere in that. Once at the law school, I will be in a better position to identify issues. I have served as vice chancellor at Ambedkar University and that is older than any national law university. so I know all those issues.”

Vijayakumar specialises in constitutional law, administrative law, human rights law, law of elections and refugee and humanitarian law. He said that he will be focusing on building NLIU’s research capacities as “today’s students are far better - they have information in advance and they don’t depend upon the books”.

Last week NLIU students had raised a furore over the possible appointment of Allahabad University Prof BP Singh - the other recommendation among the top three names that included Vijayakumar - as director at NLIU.

The students had argued that given the circumstances of resignation of Vijayakumar’s predecessor Prof SS Singh from NLIU’s top post - which were wide scale student protests against his administrative style - they should have had a greater say in the appointment of their next director at least in so far as the transparency of the process was concerned.